ACQUISITIONS / SERIALS FUNCTIONAL CONTACT
MEETING No. 4
Held at King’s College
March 17, 2004
Draft MINUTES

ATTENDEES:  Linda Aiken, Karen Chandler, Judith Coughlan-Lambly, Bill Fancy, Gail Fraser, 
Peter Glenister, Paulette Lambert, Elaine MacLean, Lloyd Melanson, Heather Saunders, Ella-
Fay Zalezsak; [Verna Mingo, Bev Neable, Nick Sobol, Terri Winchcombe via Conference call]

1.	LIBRARY MANAGEMENT SYSTEMS

1.1	TIMELINES

Revisions to the timelines were indicated and the possibility of vendor 
demonstrations being held in Nova Scotia were discussed

		1. 2	LMS SYSTEM MUST HAVE AND WOULD LIKE TO HAVE
       (DOCUMENTATION)

Distributed documentation on requirements for a Library Management 
System, as applied to Acquisitions and Serials, was reviewed. Discussion 
took place on specific items listed on the spreadsheet and many were 
rated as  “must have” or  “should have” at the meeting.  In order to 
complete the document, it was agreed that libraries would submit their 
responses to Ella-Fay Zalezsak who would then collate and redistribute 
via the listserv as well as send a copy to the LMS website. 

2.	PRIORITY SETTING OF OUTSTANDING CONCERNS WITH NOVANET

2.1	BISAC

Update on the current status of BISAC/ EDI developments took place. It 
was noted that in the 1993 RFP, EDI was a requirement that was still not 
working in GEAC Advance. Delays to the initial testing, which began in 
2003, were related to a current fix needing to be examined by the 
Novanet community. Once this issue (referred to as the “5000 Records 
Problem”) was resolved, testing could start up again. 

2.2	Linking of Pieces to Parts Issue Outstanding from Conversion

The question arose as to whether this could be automated in some way 
and how, if at all possible. Karen Chandler and Ella-Fay Zalezsak will 
investigate and report back on this.

2.3	1-WWW ITEMS

There were only a few left (less than 200) and these were being resolved 
through the Cataloguing-FC’s.



2.4	??? Holdings

Cataloguing-FCs are working on resolving this problem.

2.5	“5000” Records

Volunteers are needed to try and look at how the “fix” appeared in the 
test database and compare it to the current database to determine how 
well the “fix” has worked and what are the underlying problems. Several 
members offered to help including Bev Neable, Verna Mingo, Gail Fraser, 
Bill Fancy, Karen Chandler, Mary Dobson, Elaine MacLean with others 
willing to assist if the need is there. It was agreed that a spreadsheet of 
LCN’s would be distributed to the volunteers with a column to indicate 
comments. Ella-Fay Zalezsak will send out the spreadsheets.



3.	STRATEGY FOR THE NEXT 18 MONTHS FOR ACQUISITIONS / SERIALS

3.1	Working Group Recommendations Document Discussion

      Deferred  			

3.2	Priorities

      Deferred
 
3.3	Training

      Deferred  

4.	OTHER BUSINESS

Institutional Barcodes

It was suggested by Bev Neable and supported by Kit Clarke that it would be 
very useful to have a list of library identifying barcodes compiled. Ella-Fay 
Zalezsak agreed to get a list compiled and posted to the website.


GUI Interfaces

Some discussion took place on the value of examining the current GUI interfaces 
available to familiarize people with the possible upcoming changes to the way 
things make look in workflow processes in a new system. A number of vendor 
products were alluded to in the discussion.